Beverly Hills, CA (August 23, 2012) – Acclaimed motion picture, television and theater producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron will produce the 85th Academy Awards, Academy President Hawk Koch announced today. This will be the duo’s first involvement with the Oscars. The 85th Academy Awards will air live on Oscar® Sunday, February 24, 2013.

"Craig and Neil are forward thinkers who bring a unique perspective to the Oscar show," Koch said. "Their enormous collective talent, coupled with their love of film, serves our show perfectly."

"We are very excited to collaborate with Hawk and everyone at the Academy to produce this year's Oscars," said Zadan and Meron. "We hope to utilize our experience in producing features, TV and theater to bring something fresh and special to this incredible awards show. When we filmed ‘The Bucket List,’ we made our own personal bucket list, and producing the Oscars was #1. It’s truly a great honor."

"Craig and Neil have great talent relationships and bring an infectious energy to the production," said Academy CEO Dawn Hudson." They are creative producers in the best sense of the word."

Zadan and Meron served as executive producers on the 2002 Best Picture winner "Chicago," which won Oscars® in 6 of the 13 categories in which it was nominated. Their credits also include the features "Footloose" (2011), "Hairspray" and "The Bucket List." Zadan also produced the original "Footloose" (1984).

Zadan and Meron’s work in television includes the series "SMASH" and such movies as "A Raisin in the Sun" and the upcoming "Steel Magnolias."

For Broadway, they recently produced the Tony Award® winning revivals of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and "Promises, Promises."

The 85th Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre™ at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.

"For a very long time, we had always hoped to work with Don Mischer," said
Zadan and Meron. 'His talent and reputation are unsurpassed and we're so happy
he will be our collaborator on the 85th Academy Awards."

"I am so very excited to be directing the Academy Awards again this year and
to be working with creative producers like Craig and Neil," said Mischer. "All
of us at Don Mischer Productions are also thrilled to be producing the Oscar®
pre-show, and most significantly to continue a wonderfully gratifying
relationship with the Academy."

This will be Mischer's third consecutive year as director of the Oscars. He
has served as producer as well as director on the 83rd and 84th Academy Awards
and was nominated for Emmys® for directing both shows. Last year's Oscars
received eight Emmy® nominations, the most for any TV special.

Mischer Productions' Charlie Haykel and Juliane Hare will again produce the
Oscar pre-show. The company also returns for the fourth consecutive year to
produce the upcoming Governors Awards, alongside Academy governor Cheryl Boone
Isaacs.

Mischer's other credits include "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration
at the Lincoln Memorial," "The Kennedy Center Honors," several Super Bowl
halftime shows and the opening ceremonies of both Winter and Summer Olympic
Games. He has also produced television specials with a wide range of musical
performers, including Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Bono, Barbra Streisand, Justin
Timberlake and Yo-Yo Ma. Among the many honors Mischer has earned are 15 Emmy
Awards, 10 Directors Guild of America Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, a Peabody
Award, and the Producers Guild's 2012 Norman Lear Achievement Award in
Television.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on
Sunday, February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre™ at Hollywood & Highland
Center®, and televised live on the ABC Television Network. The Oscar
presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries
worldwide.

The Academy has moved the announcement of Oscar nominations five days earlier than as original planned, and confirmed that electronic online voting will be used this year.

Nominations will now be announced on Thursday, Jan. 10, five days earlier than the original scheduled Jan. 15 announcement. This is the earliest Oscar nominations have ever been announced, stretching the post-nomination, pre-Oscar period (during which awards campaigning is strictly limited) to its longest period in years.

Ballots will be due on Jan. 3, the earliest Academy voters have ever had to vote.

Voting will be done electronically, but other methods will be available as well. The Academy said it will provide assisted voting stations in Los Angeles, New York and London, as well as paper ballots and a 24-hour phone line to provide assistance.

An extensive study of online voting pushed the announcement of key dates to far later in the year than usual; typically, the Academy announces those dates in March or April, shortly after the previous Oscar show.

It also makes the Academy the last awards organization to announce its timetable, around which most campaign spending is based.

The timetable shortens the time that PricewaterhouseCoopers has to tally Oscar nominating ballots from the usual 10 days down to six. Presumably, online voting will allow PwC to do some of the counting electronically, rather than undertaking the entire complicated "preferential" count by hand, as the company has done in past years.

It also extends the time between the nominations announcement and the beginning of final voting to 29 days, a full 10 days longer than it was at the last Oscars.

Other key dates include Feb. 4 for the Oscar nominees luncheon. New AMPAS president Hawk Koch was known to be an advocate of moving the nominees luncheon into Oscar week, but the Feb. 4 date keeps it where it was, midway between the announcement of nominations and the Oscar show.

The new date for nominations means that Oscar will now announce the same day as BAFTA and the DGA, unless those other groups now change their own announcements.

It also places Oscar nominations before the Golden Globes ceremony, which is scheduled for Jan. 15.

In an effort to provide members and the public a longer period of time to see the nominated films, the Academy will reveal the 85th Academy Awards nominations on January 10, five days earlier than previously announced.

The bad thing about early nominations is that voters will probably have seen fewer movies(especially coming off the holidays), but the good news is that they'll have a little longer to actually watch the things nominated.

Directors Guild Changes Nomination Date to Get Out of Oscar's Way
Published: September 18, 2012 @ 6:50 pm
By Steve Pond

The Directors Guild of America has rescheduled the announcement of its feature-film nominations from Jan. 10 to Jan. 8 to avoid falling on the same day as the recently-moved Oscar nominations, a DGA spokeswoman told TheWrap on Tuesday.

The move is the first example of fallout from the Academy's announcement that its nominations will be revealed five days earlier than originally scheduled. The new Jan. 10 date put the Oscar nominations on the same day as both DGA feature-film nominations and BAFTA nominations, which would likely be buried by the publicity that surrounds the Oscar noms.

Within hours of the Academy's announcement, the DGA told to TheWrap that it had decided to alter its own schedule, moving its feature-film nominations to Tuesday, Jan. 8, and its television and commercial nominations to Wednesday, Jan. 9.

The TV and commercial noms were originally scheduled to have been announced on Jan. 11.

The move will also change the deadline for voting in those categories.

DGA documentary nominations will still be announced on Monday, Jan. 14.

The Sunne in Splendour; I prefer my Roses White

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory."

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – Seth MacFarlane will host the 85th Academy Awards®, telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron announced today. This will be MacFarlane's first appearance on Oscar's stage. The 85th Academy Awards will be broadcast live on Oscar® Sunday, February 24, on the ABC Television Network.

"We are thrilled to have Seth MacFarlane host the Oscars. His performing skills blend perfectly with our ideas for making the show entertaining and fresh," said Zadan and Meron. "He will be the consummate host, and we are so happy to be working with him."

"It's truly an overwhelming privilege to be asked to host the Oscars," said MacFarlane. "My thoughts upon hearing the news were, one, I will do my utmost to live up to the high standards set forth by my predecessors; and two, I hope they don't find out I hosted the Charlie Sheen Roast."

"Seth is unbelievably talented," said Academy President Hawk Koch. "We couldn't be happier with the creative team we've assembled. With Craig, Neil, and now Seth, we're off to a great start."

MacFarlane made his feature directorial debut this summer with the box office success "Ted. "He also co-wrote and produced the film, and voiced the title character. "Ted" has brought in over $420 million worldwide, making it one of the highest-grossing films of the year.

MacFarlane is the creative force behind the television series "Family Guy" and co-creator of "American Dad!" and "The Cleveland Show. "In September he hosted "Saturday Night Live" for the first time, for the show's 38th season premiere. An accomplished live performer, MacFarlane has played to sold-out audiences at London's Royal Albert Hall and New York's Carnegie Hall.In 2011 he released his debut album, "Music Is Better Than Words," which earned two Grammy® nominations. He also has earned 13 Emmy® nominations and won two for his work on "Family Guy."

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013, at the Dolby Theatre™ at Hollywood & Highland Center®. Don Mischer will direct the telecast for the third consecutive time. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries worldwide.

Seth MacFarlane hosting the Oscars is the best thing to happen to the show in recent years. He's a cool, fresh, unexpected and totally left field choice and I'm loving it. Finally a shake up. Whether it works or not (and I know it will work), I'm loving the choice because it's new. Oh and the never ending debacle of bring younger audiences to the show, they just did with this.